Remember Me As A Smiling Face
by misswhiteblack
Summary: She tests her heart so often to find that the breaks have not even started to mend and it feels as though she has been hit with a sledge hammer and there is a hole in her chest, a gaping wound. Lily/Lysander


**Not This Fucked Up _Wreck_ That Took It's Place**

_You're cynical && sexual, You always make a scene ..._

She spends her time acting like nothing is wrong even when everything feels so terribly wrong. She smiles and laughs and chats with her friends as though nothing has changed and she is still the same. She isn't the same though. Everything is different now but she can't say that. She can't tell them that things are different now. She doesn't know how to act so she just has to pretend that nothing is wrong. Her friends don't seem to notice and neither do her relatives and she knows that as long as she smiles and responds in the way she usually would that they'll just assume that everything is completely normal. She wants it to be that way. She doesn't want them to know that something is wrong because if the questions start she doesn't know what to say. Sometimes she finds it strange that no one has noticed that something is wrong because what has changed seems so momentous how could it be that nobody has seen it but her? She thinks it's so very obvious sometimes and she can't help flushing a little when she thinks she is about to be embarrassed but nobody ever says anything, nobody ever notices that something has changed.

_You are monochrome delirious, You are nothing that you seem ..._

She feels lucky to have always been the mysterious one, the one that others couldn't quite figure out. She is glad sometimes to be so sanguine because she is so loud and out there but her temperament changes so quickly and it always has so now nobody notices that there is something else going on. She is glad right now to be the one that often needs some time alone, glad to be the mystery of the family. She knows that sometimes her cousins just don't quite get her, like the rest of the people she knows because she is so much a mixture of her mum and dad. She's glad that they don't expect her to be calm all the time or loud all the time or sarcastic or funny or smart or witty or anything. She is glad that she is something that is different from day to day, hour to hour because being unpredictable makes it easier to cover up the fact that something is so terribly wrong.

'Hey Lily,' Lysander calls to her as she is strolling down a Hogwarts corridor and she immediately wants to blush and then turn and run away. She doesn't though. She turns and smiles as though she had wanted nothing more than to be greeted by him. She makes to toss her fiery hair over her shoulder and then remembers that she has had it cut to a bob which she believes suits her so much more than her long hair because it makes her look older.

'Hey Sander,' she responds brightly as he jogs a little to fall into step beside her and she looks up into his bright blue eyes under his wayward dark blond hair. He is tall, impossibly tall and she feels tiny walking beside him. She doesn't care about that though and she likes that fact that he is impossibly tall especially in comparison to her. Not that it should bother her at all at whether Lysander was tall or not but it did.

'I like your hair,' he says with a smile and the butterflies in her stomach are making her feel queasy and she has to mentally tell herself to get a grip. She thinks her answering smile is too simpering and that he is bound to see right through it but if he does he doesn't say anything and that makes her feel worse. She is glad that he likes her hair and that he notices that she has changed it but then he always notices these kinds of things about her. She wants to tell him that she changed it for him but she doesn't because she can't. It's too awkward and ever since she'd realised that she was in love with Lysander Scamander everything feels awkward. How do you fall in love with someone you've known most of your life?

_I'm drowning in your vanity; Your laugh is a disease_

So she talks to Olly about when she is home for the Christmas holidays because whobetter to talk to than Olly who has been James' best friend since they were born and is now his girlfriend. Lily always thought that it would be awkward but there's no way anyone could say that they didn't have a perfect relationship because they are just so genuinely happy together just like Teddy and Victoire, just like Lucy and Lorcan. Olly's a good choice because she is easy to talk to and she knows how to keep a secret and she doesn't seem surprised when Lily tells her what is wrong.

'I thought something was up,' she says putting her arm around Lily's shoulders and giving her a sisterly squeeze.

'How could you tell?' she asks Olly wondering how anyone could see through her so perfect play. She has done nothing out of the ordinary there have been no tears or overly miserable moments. She keeps her smile on her faces and acts as though nothing is wrong and just maybe she acts even more happy than usual just to try and disguise her feelings.

'Something is wrong with the light in your eyes,' Olly tells her shrugging her right shoulder. 'Since you were a baby Lils every time you smile it's like a light has been switched on behind your eyes but now, now when you smile the light has died. I could tell something was up with you. I just didn't want to say anything.'

And that scares her because she thought she'd been putting on the so perfect act and that nobody could see through it but maybe everybody could see through it and just haven't wanted to confront her about it. Maybe everyone knows exactly what is wrong and if everyone knows then surely he does too. She doesn't like that and it makes her feel embarrassed and damn the bloody Weasley genes that turn her ears red. Olly notices because she always does because that's what Olly is like and Lily doesn't know quite what to do or what to say and she wants to burst into tears. She doesn't want everyone to know because she isn't ready for them to know, she isn't ready for him to know either.

'Don't worry,' says Olly playing delicately with her hair and reminding Lily exactly why she's like the big sister that she never had. 'Nobody else has noticed and you know that I won't tell anyone but I'm here if you need any advice.'

That was why she has gone to Olly in the first place. Olly doesn't encourage her to tell him or offer advice before she has asked for it. Olly just listens and offers her shoulder and her advice for whenever Lily wants to take it. She is worried about the light behind her eyes. It makes her sad to think that all this could have robbed her of it. No one has told her about the light before and she has never realised how her eyes could reflect her emotional turmoil. She wants the light back the light she never realised was there.

_Your dirrty && your sweet, You know you are everything to me..._

She goes back to Hogwarts determined to regain the light behind her eyes so that when she next goes home Olly smiles and knows that everything has been sorted out. Lily knows that it will be difficult because it means opening herself up to someone she has known all her life, someone who could possibly really hurt her. She doesn't want to get hurt and even less does she want to be hurt by him. She feels a little out of her depth especially since her brother's are no longer around to protect her from everything. She had never wanted their protection before but now she is without it, she feels its loss. She knows she'll have to tell her friends how she is feeling she'll need their support since she can't turn to Olly here at Hogwarts. She is nervous and she doesn't like it. She wants to be strong and she wants to just grit her teeth and sort everything out. She hopes she can.

'Hey Sander,' she calls catching sight of the tall, lanky form of Lysander just ahead of her in the corridor. He turns at her call and he beams when he sees that it is her. The smile gives her hope and her determination increases. Maybe it would be all right.

'Hey Lils,' he greets her with a bear hug. 'How were your holidays?'

'Oh they were okay,' she tells him enthusiastically responding to his hug. 'What are you so happy about?'

'I have a date with India Cerise,' he says his triumph so bright that he doesn't hear the shattering of her heart as he stamps all over it. In that moment she is lost and she feels like she is drowning and she can't breathe because how could she ever compare to India? She smiles at him as though it couldn't ever possibly hurt and she takes a deep breath pretending like it doesn't tear her into two as she does so.

'That's great,' she responds with fervour even though she just wants to stare at him like a rejected puppy. 'Well, I'll see you later Ly.'

And she turns to disappear into the crowd not noticing his puzzled expression because she never calls him Ly and she slips and darts through her fellow students trying to hold back the tears. She reaches her common room and ignores the calls of her friends as she rushes to her room and throws herself into her bed. There she drowns in a sea of sorrow and she howls like the dejected puppy that she would not give into before him and she pretends to be asleep when her best friend Aziza Thomas comes into the room. She doesn't want her to know, she doesn't want anybody to know because she feels so foolish.

_&& I want to tear down at your defences, until there's nothing there but me..._

She pushes on with the rest of her year pretending like she isn't broken and pretending like she doesn't care and she doesn't speak to Lysander because when she is around him she is scared that she won't keep up the pretence. She sees him on a daily basis and she ignores him when he calls to her and eventually he stops calling but she doesn't stop seeing him. They seem to be everywhere she turns and she can see their smiling faces as they kiss and snuggle and show the world just how happy they are. She can't even sleep without seeing them and she has grown to loathe India's ink black hair and wide black eyes. She tests her heart so often to find that the breaks have not even started to mend and it feels as though she has been hit with a sledge hammer and there is a hole in her chest, a gaping wound.

And she still doesn't want anyone to know so she keeps the smiles on her face and keeps the jokes rolling off her tongue and she cries herself to sleep at night because she just can't believe how much it hurts. She feels a little like a robot and she just keeps going through the motions until she feels so exhausted that all she wants to do is sleep but she can't because all she dreams is him and it's killing her. She has to stop her sarcasm when Hugo says that Lysander is lucky to have India as his girlfriend because she is the hottest girl in the school and she had to keep acting like she doesn't care what Lysander is doing with his life. She misses him dreadfully and she aches for him constantly and she hangs on every scrap of gossip that she possibly hears about him.

Her skirts get shorter and her heels get higher and she flirts like there is no tomorrow. She bats long eyelashes at every good-looking boy that crosses her path and she knows that Hugo is spending a lot more of his time glaring at the male population than before. She dates one boy and then another and is never hurt when it is over. She constantly tests her heart but still finds the gaping wound and she knows that she is still bleeding and that no matter what she does she can't mend it.

When Gryffindor play Ravenclaw in the Quidditch she is fierceness embodied and she doesn't care if she practically knocks him off his broom and she knows he is bewildered by her actions and she wants it to be like that because if she is hurting she wants him to hurt too. At the end of the game she knows that people are finally beginning to notice that not everything is okay in the world of Lily Potter and her cousin Lucy looks at her questioningly and Hugo has nothing short of an Uncle Ron-like expression on his face but she ignores them and charges out of the dressing room waiting for no one.

_You're beautiful when you're angry, Your love is such a tease..._

Then he has finally had enough and as she sits in the wind and rain at the top of the Astronomy tower he finds her soaked to the bone and looking as though misery itself has descended upon her. She stares down into the grounds wondering how she is ever going to mend such an aching shattered heart and she knows that she can't because it hadn't been her own for a while now. She doesn't hear his approach in the howling rain and is more than a little stunned when her arm is grabbed and she is whirled round to face him and she wants to burst into tears. She tries to shake him off and she tries to run but he holds onto her with a vice like grip and it's hurting her so much to be so near him when he can't see and she can't tell him what is wrong.

'What have I done Lily?' he yells at her over the wind and the fury in his face scares her a little because she has never seen him like this before but she can't answer him. She can't tell him why she is hurting him or why she is talking to him or why she is mad at him and why should she tell him because he doesn't love her and he doesn't want her and he doesn't need her. She loves him and wants him and needs him but she can never have him.

'Tell me why you hate me?' he almost screams at her and it frightens her again as she looks up into intense blue eyes that are blinking in the rain that is running down his face and he shakes her slightly as she struggles once more to run away. She finds that she has nowhere to go and now she is cornered with no way out and she doesn't like it one bit.

'I don't hate you,' she shouts above the howling wind wishing that it would just take her right from his hands and blow her over the edge of the tower just so she didn't have to face these questions. She could act to anyone else but in front of him she felt powerless and her facade has fallen crumpled in front of her.

'Then why are you acting like this?'

Her urge to scream and shout at him is overcoming and she tries so hard to swallow it back but it's rising like bile in her throat and she wants nothing more for him to know how much he has hurt her. Yet she knows there is nothing he can do about it because it isn't his fault that he doesn't love her and it's her own fault for falling so impossibly for him and it's her own fault that it hurts so much. She doesn't want to blame herself though. She wants to blame him and she wants him to blame himself for breaking her heart so completely that her heart is still bleeding.

'I love you,' she says and crumples towards him with exhaustion from keeping up her act for so long and the pain doesn't register when her knees hit the stone of the floor, 'but you don't love me.'

And saying it out loud is even worse than when she says it in her head because suddenly it's like all the hope she has ever had has gone and she knows she is no longer Lily, the mysterious girl. That girl is gone to be replaced with a mess of anguish and pain and anger and hate. She can't remember the last time she smiled without it hurting her or the last time she made a joke that wasn't to cover up the pain and heartache. She is crying now and she is glad of the rain because she knows he won't be able to see and she doesn't want him to know that she is crying.

She doesn't realise for some time that he is kneeling beside her and holding her tightly in his arms and she is overcome with embarrassment and she tries to pull back from him but he holds her firmly to him. She wants to run away but she can't as he holds her against his chest and she begins to relax slightly.

'I'm so sorry Lily,' he murmurs into her hair and with the howling wind she barely hears him and she pulls back a little to look at him feeling every inch a fool.

'It's not your fault,' she says with an ashamed expression on her face her eyes downcast because she cannot bear to look at him.

'Oh but it is,' he tells her grasping her cold face between his large hands and tilting it upward so she looks at him. 'I am a fool because I should have told you so many times before but I convinced myself that you would never want me. I asked India out because I knew that it didn't matter if she rejected me it could never hurt as much as if you rejected me. I was too much of a coward to tell you how I feel.'

She stares at him because she can't believe what he is saying and she feels as though she has sunk into a dream and her fingers grip his t-shirt frantically because she is terrified that she is about to wake up.

'What are you saying?'

'I love you,' he says, 'and I am an idiot for not telling you sooner.'

She kisses him then throwing her arms around his neck and pulling herself towards his mouth with a force that she didn't realise that she was capable of and he responds with equal force as though he realises its necessity. She doesn't stop kissing him as she tries to pull him closer and closer and she knows she is clinging to him with desperation because she is so scared that he is about to disappear. She lets out a gasp as he breaks the kiss but his hands roves up into her hair and he looks at her straight in the eye and the triumph in them in nothing like she has ever seen and he kisses her again with the same deadly power that weakens her.

_I'm drowning in your dizzy noise, && I want to hear you scream..._

And all too soon it's the summer holidays and he has now left Hogwarts although she still has one year to go but she isn't worried at all because she sees the way he looks at her and the triumph in his eyes has not left since that night. When she arrives at the Burrow because that's where they always go at the end of term she notices the smiles passed between her relatives when they realise that she is back to normal and later when Lysander comes round she smiles when her brothers and cousins decide to give him "the talk". She watches from a distance and is joined by Olly whose eyes are locked on James with a look that Lily knows because she constantly looks like that when she is looking at Lysander. When Olly finally tears her eyes from James she looks at Lily and smiles at her and whispers in her ear,

'It's nice to see the light is back.'

* * *

_I hope you liked it.  
Dedicated to Ela (never-ending nights with you)  
&& Ellie (s i l v e r a u r o r a)  
Because they are Simply Awesome.  
Especially at Next Gen._

_Kerr X.  
P.S. I Adore, Love, Need Reviews._


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